Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island National Park was established in 1937 and protects a narrow, elongated strip of the island's northern coast, on the Gulf of St Lawrence. Its mandate is to conserve the broad sandy beaches, the dune systems and the wetlands, both freshwater and salt marsh, that characterise this shoreline. Its creation involved expropriating farmland to form a continuous protected band along the coast.

Its most singular natural feature arrived late: in 1998 the provincial government transferred to Parks Canada the dune system of the Greenwich peninsula, some 6 km² that raised the park's total area to about 28 km². Greenwich preserves rare parabolic dunes, U-shaped and in continuous movement, regarded as one of the most significant ecological formations in North America; they are crossed on floating boardwalks that keep walkers off the sand. Archaeological excavations in the area have documented human presence for some 10,000 years, and after the Palaeo-Indians came the Mi'kmaq, French, Acadians, Scots, Irish and English.

The park's protected beaches are breeding habitat for the piping plover, a threatened species, which is why it has been designated an Important Bird Area of Canada and why specific stretches of beach are closed each season. The coastal waters are among the warmest north of the Carolinas, because of the shallow depth and the influence of the Gulf Stream. The park also preserves notable built heritage, such as the Victorian mansion Dalvay-by-the-Sea, of 1895, a record of the era when the island was a summer destination for well-off families, and it borders traditional farming and fishing communities.